The effect on White Fang was to give him a greater faith in himself,
and a greater pride. He walked less softly among the grown dogs; his
attitude toward them was less compromising. Not that he went out of his
way looking for trouble. Far from it. But upon his way he demanded
consideration. He stood upon his right to go his way unmolested and to
give trail to no dog. He had to be taken into account, that was all. He
was no longer to be disregarded and ignored, as was the lot of puppies,
and as continued to be the lot of the puppies that were his team-mates.
They got out of the way, gave trail to the grown dogs, and gave up meat
to them under compulsion. But White Fang, uncompanionable, solitary,
morose, scarcely looking to right or left, redoubtable, forbidding of
aspect, remote and alien, was accepted as an equal by his puzzled
elders. They quickly learned to leave him alone, neither venturing
hostile acts nor making overtures of friendliness. If they left him
alone, he left them alone—a state of affairs that they found, after a
few encounters, to be pre-eminently desirable.
In midsummer White Fang had an experience. Trotting along in his silent
way to investigate a new tepee which had been erected on the edge of
the village while he was away with the hunters after moose, he came
full upon Kiche. He paused and looked at her. He remembered her
vaguely, but he _remembered_ her, and that was more than could be said
for her. She lifted her lip at him in the old snarl of menace, and his
memory became clear. His forgotten cubhood, all that was associated
with that familiar snarl, rushed back to him. Before he had known the
gods, she had been to him the centre-pin of the universe. The old
familiar feelings of that time came back upon him, surged up within
him. He bounded towards her joyously, and she met him with shrewd fangs
that laid his cheek open to the bone. He did not understand. He backed
away, bewildered and puzzled.
But it was not Kiche’s fault. A wolf-mother was not made to remember
her cubs of a year or so before. So she did not remember White Fang. He
was a strange animal, an intruder; and her present litter of puppies
gave her the right to resent such intrusion.
One of the puppies sprawled up to White Fang. They were half-brothers,
only they did not know it. White Fang sniffed the puppy curiously,
whereupon Kiche rushed upon him, gashing his face a second time. He
backed farther away. All the old memories and associations died down
again and passed into the grave from which they had been resurrected.
He looked at Kiche licking her puppy and stopping now and then to snarl
at him. She was without value to him. He had learned to get along
without her. Her meaning was forgotten. There was no place for her in
his scheme of things, as there was no place for him in hers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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